The end of affirmative action was inevitable. The only surprise is that such bad intentions persisted for so long.

First, those who favored racial preferences always pushed back the goalposts for the program’s success. Will institutionalized reverse bias last him 20, 60, or indefinitely?

Parity is now defined as absolute equality of results. If ‘fairness’ is not available, institutionalized ‘racism’ is the only explanation for inequality. And only reverse racism was seen as a cure.

Second, affirmative action was imposed on the backend of adult recruitment and college admissions. However, early correction at the K-12 school level was the only solution to achieve parity. But such intervention was made impossible by teacher unions, the rise of identity politics, and government rights. All opposed criticizing school choice, self-help programs, cultural barriers, or restricting their blanket rights.

Third, class, the true barometer of privilege, has become irrelevant. Surrealism followed. Truly blessed Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Meghan Marker preach to the nation about its injustice as if they were far worse off than the poor “deplorable people” of East Palestine, Ohio. bottom.

Fourth, affirmative action advocates have never been in the ring of proving that racial prejudice does not violate the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the text of the Constitution.

What they are left with is that long ago the 90% white majority violated their base document, so such past bad unconstitutional prejudice can legally be remedied by today’s “good” unconstitutional prejudice. It was a boring discussion.

Fifth, proponents do not adequately explain why the sins of previous generations fall on descendants raised in the post-Civil Rights era.

Also, why should people who have never experienced institutionalized racism, much less Jim Crow apartheid and slavery, be collectively compensated for the suffering of long-dead individuals? I couldn’t explain. No wonder many polls show 70% of Americans are in favor of ending affirmative action, including African Americans.

Sixth, there was never a “rainbow” coalition of shared victimhood by non-whites. This is the concept necessary to perpetuate the assumptions of white privilege, superiority, and anger that are essential to reverse discrimination based on race. A dozen ethnic groups have higher per capita incomes than whites.

Asians are subject to internment, immigration restrictions and demarcation exclusion. But on average, they are more economically successful, have lower suicide rates, and live longer than whites.

Arguments for affirmative action do nothing to explain why Asians and other minorities face discrimination outnumbering the majority white population. As a result, Affirmative Action discriminated against Asians on the assumption that they were too successful!

Seventh, no one explained when affirmative action would apply. For example, blacks were overwhelmingly “overrepresented” in meritocratic professional football and basketball. But no one called for “proportional representation” to deal with such “alien influences” despite all other demographics being underestimated.

But if black people are “underrepresented” in baseball, even if Latino players are “underrepresented” and white players are “underrepresented” as well, to address that fact should have taken compensatory measures. Of course, no one in our race-obsessed culture disputed that fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq killed twice as many white men as the demographic.

Eighth, few could determine who was what, much less what criteria determined racial preferences, in an increasingly mixed-marriage mass immigrant society. In crazy fashion, pink-blond Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren became Harvard’s first “Native American” law professor, thanks to her “high cheekbones.” While light-skinned Latinos were considered marginalized, some dark Italians and Greeks were not.

Ninth, because the original spirit of the civil rights movement was destroyed, the loathsome Wokism absorbed Affirmative Action and made it even more loathsome. Americans were therefore asked to put up with a return to uncomfortable segregated dormitories, “separate but equal” graduation ceremonies, and racially exclusive workshops.

Tenth, and finally, affirmative action was insidiously subverting meritocracy. America’s hallmark values ​​of tribal-blind inclusion once explained why this country won the world by shedding old European class prejudices. But this value seemed more and more abandoned.

The late Stockton Rush, captain and inventor of the ill-fated Titan, posthumously boasted that his company didn’t need an “old white man” with long military expertise in submarines. When told, Americans found racism waking up. Not only is it unpleasant, but it can also kill you.

The country, which increasingly embraces essentialism of race, gender and sexual orientation in training pilots, enrolling in medical school, and rising to the military high command, is characteristic of failed states abroad. It was a country heading in a direction similar to third world tribalism.

Ultimately, the courts finally stepped in to end this unconstitutional deviation, more akin to the commissions of the former Soviet Union than our ideal of equality before the law.

The American people agreed. And my only regret seems to be why I didn’t do it sooner.

Victor Davis Hanson is a Distinguished Fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of Basic Books’ The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. You can get in touch by sending an email to authorvdh@gmail.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.